Q&A: Is there life after death?

Might as well go out with a bang and wrap up “QuApalooza” Q&A month with what just might be the biggest question of them all. Updated from the archives:

Q. Is there life after death?

A. Can’t say that I have an answer for that one – it’s a big question. But I do think that is the kind of really big, philosophical question that “psychic” (intuitive, spiritual, meditative) is suited to deal with. There is no concrete proof of life after death, just like there is no “proof” of psychics or intuition. The best we can do is infer, interpret our own sense and experience. Oddly enough, one of my favorite analogies for this comes from science and none other than Bill Nye the science guy, and his explanation of how we know the Earth has a solid core. It’s not like we can drill down and take a look. We can take seismograph readings around the globe and compare the measurable vibrations from earthquakes through the molten mantle. “Shadows” in the seismic data infer a solid center. We can’t measure what’s on “the other side”. We can’t drill and look. We can only infer based on subjective experience. Since subjective experience isn’t measurable the way earthquakes are, implications about life and death and life after death over the ages have been classified as religion, spirituality, superstition, belief. These are all real, life-enriching, valid human experiences, just not prove-able ones.

At the same time, there is no concrete proof that this direct experience doesn’t exist either. Like my favorite quote from J.K. Rowlings’ “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”…”Just because it is happening in your mind doesn’t mean it isn’t real”…or something like that.

Spirituality, spirit guides, angels, crossed over loved ones and so on require a different sort of inference and “number crunching” than using earthquakes and seismographs. Astronomy is another analogy. There is a theory that supermassive black holes exist at the center of galaxies. Not something we can hop in the car and drive over measure. We can only look from very far away. If we look at galaxies with just visible light, we miss all sorts of things… We miss all of the infrared, radio, xray and gamma frequencies that our eyes can’t directly see. Psychics and intuition, in a way, is like radio astronomy for the human spirit…our intuition lets us look at life in a way slightly outside the norm…detect things that aren’t obvious and would otherwise be missed…just like radio astronomy lets us learn things we couldn’t detect with visual light alone.

How does that apply to spirit guides, angels and life after death?

Your heart, your imagination, your inner knowing, dreams, coincidence, synchronicity and symbolism are your radio telescope. They let you detect, experience, infer and ‘know’ beyond what logic, science, and ‘normal’ senses can infer and detect. One doesn’t prove the other…one doesn’t cause the other…one isn’t right and the other wrong. Light telescopes and radio telescopes are both right…they just focus on different wave lengths of energy within the universe. Science and spirituality are the same way. One doesn’t prove or disprove the other…they just look at different aspects of the human experience. Both are important and helpful and right. They both are lights shining on different parts of the night.

We may not have any real way to scientifically “prove” life after death. There is certainly no way to concretely prove one religion or one philosophy over any other. We can prove the sun’s existence by pointing to the sky on a clear day. But how do you prove a quasar exists to someone who won’t look at the radio telescope equipment?

When one telescope after another, and another and many more still discover the same finding, you have to believe the data is real. Every culture, society, philosophy has some view about life after death. Everyone has some sort of ‘data’…Everyone has SOME opinion about life after death, or at least SOME suspicion about it…yes or no. It’s universal. It is, in a vague sense, a repeated experiment. Life after death has been everywhere, and every-when. If it isn’t a part of the physical universe, then it is certainly part of humanity.

Whatever conclusion you draw…that is your truth, your explanation, your belief. It is good and right and valid for you. It doesn’t matter if your understanding matches the majority or not. It doesn’t matter if it matches anyone else at all. I know what I believe, but spelling that out here isn’t going to help you.

Readings can help, though. Another point of view can help you see more clearly (see the post “parallax“) Readings can help you interpret the data from your radio telescope to extend the analogy. They help you to find your own answer which far more valuable than giving you someone else’s answers. May you hear the intuitive message, see the spiritual data, and find happiness in the proof they hold for you.